Cardiac cachexia is associated with sympathetic nerve activity in skeletal muscle

From the AHA meeting abstracts:

Introduction: Cardiac cachexia is associated with poor prognosis in patients with heart failure (HF). Sympathetic overactivation might be implicated in the development of muscle wasting, considering the recent data that carvedilol significantly reversed body weight (BW) loss in HF patients…

Methods: We prospectively evaluated changes in BW in 108 non-edematous HFrEF patients in whom muscle sympathetic nerve activity (MSNA) was measured...

Results... One-year combined event rate was significantly higher in BW loss group...MSNA...was significantly higher in BW loss group than in non-BW loss group. Importantly, MSNA burst incidence had a moderate predictability for significant BW loss by receiver-operating characteristic analysis (area under the curve=0.794).

Conclusion: Sympathetic overactivation determined by MSNA could predict significant BW loss in HFrEF patients.